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A US FEDERAL judge has ruled that Donald Trump’s National Guard deployment to Portland, Oregon is “unlawful” and ordered it permanently blocked, a legal setback for the president’s use of troops in the country’s cities.

Trump has sent the National Guard to three Democratic-led cities this year – Los Angeles, the capital Washington DC and Memphis – but his efforts to deploy soldiers in Portland and Chicago have been tied up in the courts.

Trump has repeatedly called the Oregon city “war-ravaged” and riddled with violent crime to justify sending forces there.

But District Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump nominee, rejected the administration’s claim that protests against an ongoing immigration crackdown amounted to a rebellion justifying the deployment of National Guard troops to Oregon.

“The President’s unlawful federalisation of the National Guard violates the Tenth Amendment, which ‘reserves to the States’ any powers not expressly delegated to the federal government in the Constitution,” Immergut wrote.

“With respect to the deployment of any state’s National Guard to Oregon,” she concluded, “THIS PERMANENT INJUNCTION ORDER IS IN FULL FORCE AND EFFECT.”